Access to GPs

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 29 November 2022.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Labour 1:37, 29 November 2022

In your initial response to this question, First Minister, you referred to the other health professionals who can play a role in alleviating the pressures on GPs themselves. You may be interested to know that I visited only last week with Jonathan Lloyd Jones in the Caerau pharmacy. It's a pharmacy at the top of a very disadvantaged area—very much that issue of the inverse healthcare law—but what they're doing up there is working with the new community pharmacy contract in Wales. And I have to say I sat in—with individuals' permission—as they did minor ailment diagnosis and prescribing, and took that pressure off the GPs, but were liaising directly with the GPs, and sharing the data information as well, with the patients' authority. What a way forward that is. So, can I ask him for his assurance that we'll keep on exploring these innovative ways not only to relieve pressure off GPs, but also to promote the health and well-being of those in some of our most disadvantaged communities?